Great Salt Bay Community School Choir Honors Fellow Student with Album, “Sail On Silver Girl”

Submitted by Anne-Marie D’Amico, choir teacher at Great Salt Bay (GSB) Community School in AOS 93. The article was written as part of the Lincoln County Artsbeat of the Lincoln County News. Photo credit: Lincoln County News.

Great Salt Bay (GSB) Community School choir recently completed a project directed by teacher Anne-Marie D’Amico titled “Sail On Silver Girl,” and consists of a choral album and a documentary film about the project.

The project was named “Sail On Silver Girl” to honor the late Isabelle Manahan, D’Amico said. Manahan, who had been a member of GSB’s advanced chorus before going on to Lincoln Academy, passed away in June of last year at age 15.

“We named it after her passing to keep her memory alive,” said D’Amico. “It was another extension of our community reflection, especially because Izzy was so active in all the programs at GSB.”

The “Sail On Silver Girl” project, begun in September 2017, features “last year’s eighth graders and seventh graders and this year’s eighth graders” in the GSB advanced chorus, D’Amico said. Some of those involved are now freshmen at Lincoln Academy.

“We’ve never done anything like this before,” said D’Amico of the ambitious project that also features local musicians Sean Fleming on piano/keyboard, Dave Martin on guitar, John Cannon on bass, Michael Sevon on drums, and Curt Boot on trumpet. Cannon and Sevon both work at GSB.

John Morrison, of Auburn, was the project’s sound engineer and Jared Morneau, of Brunswick, was the video engineer.

Members of local community chorus Common Threads also took part in the project, D’Amico said.

It was the first time that GSB choral students had been involved in a musical project of such magnitude and seriousness, from the very beginning of learning all the songs through to listening to raw recorded tracks and later to mixed tracks, which “made their faces light up,” D’Amico said.